


Little Things

by leitmotifs (orphan_account)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Drabbles, M/M, Some Fluff, Some angst, Some death, how do i properly tag this, some life, some sirens and robots, some time travelers too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:05:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/leitmotifs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of mornings and humanoid robots and fish tails: these are one hundred glimpses of Niall and Harry through different universes, different eyes, life and death and beyond that.</p><p>Alternatively, Niall and Harry and one hundred moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. when the daylight comes

**Author's Note:**

> i????????? have a ridiculous amount of unfinished ideas?? so this is my little drabble dumping ground for the time being and who knows, maybe i'll actually expand on one of these someday, haha.
> 
> one down, ninety nine to go!

He’s not a morning person. Mornings are kind of really awful, because they inundate him with light at ungodly hours and fill the air with the metaphorical chirping of the various woodland creatures sitting outside his bedroom window. Mornings have a rude way of yanking the blankets away from him and then laughing at his face when, later, it turns out that the coffee maker is broken. Mornings shove a clock in his face and remind him that there are still at least twelve more hours left to put up with.

But, _mornings._ Mornings are kind of fantastic, because they present him with the sight of someone in his arms, blond hair tousled and eyes still closed and lips just slightly parted. Mornings remind him that his dreams aren’t just dreams anymore, that Niall really is there with his sleepy, hazy rambles and silly kisses that wake him up far better than any cup of coffee can. Mornings remind him that he’ll have at least twelve more hours to spend with this boy who makes his heart do all sorts of strange, funny things, who makes him smile so wide it hurts, who has him getting up at six a.m. for no reason.

Harry isn’t a morning person at all— but Niall is pretty damn convincing.


	2. if you could spare an hour or so

"Hey, Harry. I’d say I miss you, but I guess that’s cheesy or something. Lou got the new FIFA game today. Wish you were here, so I could beat your ass at it."

Beep.

"Niall again — and still paying your phone bills. You can’t see me right now, but I’m shaking my head at you. Anyway, you should probably change your voice mail. This one that we recorded is, what? A year old already?"

Beep.

"I never gave you back your jacket, the one you lent me when you tried taking us to a zoo and it ended up raining. I washed it and everything. All you need to do is come by and pick it up. You’re welcome. I still miss you."

Beep.

"Let’s go on a road trip. Like, a spontaneous thing. Or we can sprout wings and fly into space together. No, ‘m not drunk. I think I wanna see the stars with you, though. Come back, please?"

Beep.

"Um, it’s Niall again. If you can spare an hour, I was wondering if you’d want to go for lunch at that fancy place by the river, the one you really like. Or not. I’d appreciate if you’d at last call me back to let me know. I j— I really miss you, yeah?"

Beep.

(There are one hundred and eighty-two voice mails: one for each day for the six months that Harry’s been gone.)

(Niall keeps leaving them, despite that there are six feet of earth between them now and he’ll never get an answer and it will always be a table for one.)


	3. i think i wanna marry you

The first thing he heard when the fan came up to their signing table: “Wow, you guys are like a married couple!”

Harry was in the middle of fending Niall off from stealing his Sharpie — the blue one, which was his favorite color Sharpie, thank you very much, and Niall had no business trying to steal it like that. He’s all gangly limbs and whiny pleas as he made numerous grabs for the thing.

The last thing Harry expected to hear from Niall, in return: “Yeah, well, I’m still waiting for a ring.”

Presently, he’s remembering this. It doesn’t ease the butterflies in his stomach, but it does make him smile. He’s sitting across from Niall, who’s laughing at some joke he made, and they’ve got dinner between them and there’s a ring about to burn a hole in his pocket.

It’s kind of like a book, one of those really good, but painful ones. You think you know what’s going to happen and you really, _really_ , want to know, but you’re also afraid of turning the page and finding out what does happen.

 

 

 

(Spoiler alert: Niall says yes.)


	4. you're going down

One hour, forty six minutes, and twenty nine seconds.

It’s not like Niall is counting or anything. There’s just simply nothing else to do in the bedroom, and he certainly isn’t going to go back out where that good-for-nothing, blanket-hogging, curly-haired, green-eyed _jerk_. He does regret not stomping off to the kitchen instead, because now that he’s chosen the bedroom as a sulking spot, he can’t cave and come back out first. His pride simply won’t let him.

Two hours, seventeen minutes, and five seconds.

It’s not like Harry is counting either. But the ceiling is getting awfully dull to look at, and he can’t simply walk into the kitchen, because he knows that loud-mouthed, clothes-stealing, fair-haired, blue-eyed _dweeb_ will hear him. Moving from his spot would mean defeat, and his pride won’t tolerate such a blow. So Harry stays put.

Three hours, three minutes, and forty two seconds.

Niall interrupts his own humming for the umpteenth time, so he can look to the door and listen for traces of movement. It has been relatively silent on the other side, and he wonders what Harry’s up to. Sighing, Niall flops back down on the bed. He wishes their bedroom had more exciting stuff.

Three hours, fifty six minutes, and eleven seconds.

Harry attempts looking through some channels and, upon finding nothing but old reruns of various shows, decides to switch the television off afterwards. Loath he is to admit, there’s no point in watching when there’s no one next to him to poke and tease.

Four hours, thirty nine minutes, and twenty two seconds.

Niall finishes switching out all of the pillow jackets. They’ve been due for a change anyway, so he thinks of it as housekeeping. He hears the faint sound of the television and is momentarily offended that Harry would even think about watching during a time like this, but the sounds stop quickly and engulf the apartment in silence again. Niall frowns to himself and burrows back under the sheets.

Five hours, forty one minutes, and thirty six seconds.

Harry idly opens and closes the shutter. It’s starting to rain outside, and he definitely doesn’t think about how Niall likes to wear his sweaters (even the ugly ones; the itchy ones; the ones that are too big on him).

Six hours, three minutes, and fifty nine seconds.

Niall blames the soft _pitter patter_ of rain for the sudden drop in temperature — he could swear that it was very moderate just an hour ago. He builds a fort of pillows and blankets and doesn’t think about how Harry likes to take the biggest blankets and wrap them around himself, and how he might scoot closer to Niall so they can share it.

Six hours, four minutes, and twenty seconds.

Harry’s not really sure what they were arguing about in the first place, but he sure wants it to be over already. So he drags himself from the couch to the bedroom door.

Unfortunately, he is in the middle of a knock when Niall suddenly opens the door, so Harry finds himself rapping his knuckles against Niall’s forehead instead. “Sorry,” says Harry, and Niall scrunches his nose in that weird, cute way and returns with an, “Ow.”

Then one of them blurts, “I can’t stay mad at you.” Harry’s not sure who says it first, and it does sound a little silly considering neither of them remember the original source of the fight, but hey, that hardly matters when the reply is, “Yeah, me neither,” punctuated by a kiss that renders the argument over.

Next time, they’ll split the cookie evenly.


	5. wherever you are

The ship was boarding, but Niall had arrived a few minutes late and was rewarded with the ever pleasant sight of hundreds of people filing onto the boat at the same time. The dock seemed to be a mixture of tears and zeal, all concentrated into this wriggling mass of bodies near the ship — so Niall opted to stay near the edges of the dock. That was it, really; he was never a big fan of crowds, so he found some benches off to the side and decided to sit there. It definitely wasn’t because of the boy he’d been watching for the past ten minutes.

It was by pure coincidence that Niall sat down next to him, this boy with a seemingly untamable mop of curls on his head and eyes which, upon looking up at Niall’s cough, were a pretty shade of green. “Hi,” Niall said, brilliantly, because he’d talked to plenty of girls back home before and he’d been very sure of himself, but now his tongue was being a bit uncooperative.

The boy raised an eyebrow. He had a sketchbook in his lap and a piece of charcoal between his fingers, the skin of which was darkened from holding it so long. “Hi,” he said, and then he returned to drawing — the ship, it seemed — and ignoring Niall.

"Um," Niall said, and after floundering for another excuse to hear the other boy’s slow, almost dulcet voice, continued, "I’m attracted to you."

"Oh?" He succeeded in gaining the boy’s attention now, and those green eyes were turned on him once more. They held some amusement.

"I mean—!" Niall cleared his throat, tugging absently at the handle of his luggage. "That what’s-it law they accepted— Universal Gravitation, was it? Yeah. You’re attracted to me, too. Science says so."

On his list of _Things I’ve Done and Now Regret,_ he reckoned this was a tough contender for number one. “I’m Niall. Sorry,” he added, beet red because god _damn_ , his mother taught him how to sew and how to can but never taught him how to properly talk to nice-looking boys you met on the dock.

But the brunet simply chuckled. “Are you getting on that ship?”

Niall nodded, drawing his one suitcase to his lap as if to prove it. “I was supposed to go with my mum, but she got sick at the last minute, so s’just me. Are you?”

The other boy nodded, flipping his sketchbook shut and stuffing the charcoal into his coat pocket. “Niall, was it?”

"Yeah?"

"I’m Harry." The boy — _Harry_ — actually smiled at him, and oh, he had dimples. “I was waiting for the line to die down.” He gestured to the steady stream of people boarding the ship.

Niall nodded again, his eyes straying on the sketchbook. Maybe he’d ask to see it later. (If he hadn’t scared Harry off by then.) “Would you maybe then— uh—” He looked up at the sky and counted silently to three. “—get on with me?”

"If you’ll keep me entertained with science," Harry told him, and it took some time for Niall to process that the boy had actually said yes, had actually implied that he hadn’t minded the whole _universal gravitation_ bout.

" ‘course not!" He didn’t bother to suppress the excitement in his voice, because wow, wouldn’t his mother be proud of him, making new friends already. "The line’s pretty short now, you wanna go?"

"If you’re ready, mate."

Niall stood to his feet and brought his suitcase up with him. It was pretty heavy, but Harry seemed to have no problem with his own two bags, so for the sake of self-image, Niall tried to copy his look of nonchalance despite the way his arms felt like they were going to fall off. “Ready?” Harry asked him, with his green eyes and dimpled smile and all, and any apprehension that Niall might have had about traveling alone was now gone.

"Ready," he assented, and then they were walking to the line. The next few minutes passed in a blur; conversation struck up quickly between them and it had Niall marvelling at how easy it was to talk to Harry.

_Maybe this won’t be so bad after all,_ Niall thought, and he couldn’t help but smile to himself as he and Harry stepped onboard the _Titanic._


	6. like ships in the night

"Lads, to celebrate the new year, we have something to tell you," Niall announces to the living room, with Harry’s hand in his and an expression of solemnity on his face.

"Did you two finally hook up?" Zayn asks, not looking up from his phone.

"Yes," Harry says, and three heads whip up and three pairs of eyes settle on them.

"Really?" asks Liam.

Harry looks to Niall, and Niall looks to Harry. Then, Niall grins, lets go of Harry’s hand, and exclaims, “Ha! Just kidding!” He and Harry burst into peals of laughter, obviously entertained by their own little joke.

(“I can’t wait to finally tell them,” Niall confides in Harry later on, when they’re hidden away in his room. 

Harry hums, smiling as he rains a series of butterfly kisses down the side of NIall’s jaw. “They’ll never see it coming.”)

(In the other room, Louis returns to his Twitter, bored. “When they finally tell us,” he says to the other boys, “just pretend to be surprised.”)


	7. take you to the stars

"I love you from here—" he said, and he had been smiling despite his mission behind him, smiling into the crook of his boyfriend’s neck and hugging the taller boy close. _Good luck_ , Harry had whispered back, _come home safe_ , and Niall was shaking but the tremors went away when soft lips were pressed against his. The world seemed okay.

But in space, the world is small: an orb of green and blue and swirls of white, and if Niall holds up his thumb, it’s about the size of his nail. _Beautiful_ , he thinks, and he’s not sure whether he’s thinking of the earth or of green eyes and mahogany curls, but with the last breaths of oxygen in his tank, he says, “—to here.”

Only the wreckage of the space ship hears his whisper.


	8. been awake for a while now

"Nialler," Harry says, practically dangling over the back of the couch in an attempt to get the blond’s attention. "Knock knock."

"No," says Niall curtly, pulling the blanket over his head and _trying_ to go back to sleep.

"Knock knock," Harry insists. He finally topples over the couch and lands on the Niall-shaped lump. He loops his arms around his boyfriend and nuzzles into the curve of his shoulder.

Niall groans. “Who’s there?” He’s barely audible through the cotton.

"Madam."

"Madam who?"

Harry’s lips curve into a grin. He says, in his best imitation of a Southern drawl, “M’damn stars, you’re beautiful.”

There is a second’s pause. Then, Niall peeks out from the blankets, all blue eyes and tousled hair and grumpy pout, and allows Harry closer. Pleased with the outcome, Harry leans down and kisses him.

"Idiot," Niall mumbles, but he kisses back anyway.


End file.
